AI governance researcher Divya Siddarth joins Anthropic's alignment team

On August 15, Collective Intelligence Project (CIP) co-founder and AI governance researcher Divya Siddarth announced she is joining Anthropic's alignment team, where her work will focus on democratic governance and countering power concentration; the same day, CIP confirmed a leadership handover to Joal Stein and Zarinah Hagnew. Researchers including Sarah Hooker posted about the hire, and the news has been confirmed by both the parties involved and third parties — notably, it signals the alignment team at Anthropic bringing in a stronger social governance perspective.

Confirmed

• Divya Siddarth herself posted the announcement that she is joining Anthropic's alignment team, saying she will keep working to build a democratic, pluralistic future in a world of superintelligence (m1, m3)
• She is a CIP co-founder who had been gradually stepping back from CIP's day-to-day operations over the past few months to support work at the OpenAI Foundation (m3)
• CIP will now be led by Joal Stein and Zarinah Hagnew (m1, m2, m3)
• Researcher Sarah Hooker posted that Anthropic hired the AI governance expert for its alignment team (m2), providing third-party corroboration

Unconfirmed

• Two other posts the same day, attributed respectively to Ethan Perez (m4) and Dr. Atoosa (m5), repeat Divya's announcement almost sentence by sentence — even copying over exclusive details such as the CIP handover and Joal Stein and Zarinah Hagnew taking over — without offering any independent information; based on the available material, it cannot be confirmed that the two actually each announced joining Anthropic's alignment team

Why it matters

• Divya Siddarth has long championed democratic governance and pluralistic values in AI, and her arrival shows Anthropic adding a democratic governance lens on top of technical alignment
• Having already been supporting the OpenAI Foundation's work, joining Anthropic means she will now connect the governance agendas of multiple frontier AI organizations; the completed leadership transition also marks a new chapter for CIP

2026-08-15 ~ 2026-08-15 · 5 related posts

• [source] Divya Siddarth joins Anthropic alignment team to work on democratic governance — divyasiddarth · 2026-08-15
• [source] Divya Siddarth joins Anthropic's alignment team — divyasiddarth · 2026-08-15
• Ethan Perez Joins Anthropic Alignment Team — EthanJPerez · 2026-08-15
• Dr. Atoosa Joins Anthropic's Alignment Team — Dr_Atoosa · 2026-08-15

1 near-duplicate retellings: sarahookr